Namibia insists that mining companies operating in the resource-rich African nation must add value to the minerals before shipping them abroad — despite critics’ concerns that the country lacks the necessary infrastructure to become a manufacturing hub for battery metals critical to the global transition to clean energy.

President Hage Geingob recently warned delegates at the EU-Namibia Business Forum in Brussels, Belgium, that his country will no longer allow raw mineral exports.

This comes on the heels of a similar prohibition on the export of key minerals and lithium in June, and 11 months after Namibia became the first African country to sign an agreement with the European Union (EU) to supply the bloc with critical minerals.

Geingob said the Southern African country, which has abundant deposits of lithium, vital for renewable energy storage, as well as rare earth minerals needed for permanent magnets in electric vehicles and wind turbines, is ready to collaborate with the EU to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, but not at the expense of developing local industries.

“Together with our partners from Europe, we are dedicated to improving the sustainability of our extractive industry and developing local processing, refining, recovery, and recycling capacity in Namibia,” Geingob said.

There needs to be a huge investment, concurrent with the development of these facilities, in infrastructure, specifically, water, power and logistics.

He added that this approach has the potential to underpin sustainable, clean, and inclusive economic growth, while also fostering domestic resource mobilisation, economic diversification, and deeper linkages to the broader economy.

Windhoek sees value addition as a key policy intervention to address the country’s worsening unemployment challenge and high inequality rate.

Speaking at the ground-breaking ceremony of the world’s first industrial scale green iron plant on Monday, which will produce iron at zero carbon emissions, the minister in the presidency, Christine Hoebes, said the Namibian government’s immediate objective is to create a sustainable economy by leveraging the country’s abundant natural resources to diversify the economy

“Local value addition leads to the creation of jobs in the value chain and throughout the wider economy. By enhancing our products through local processing, we can command higher market prices, increasing the economic benefits for Namibia,” the minister said.

Not quite ready yet

Andrada Mining CEO Anthony Viljoen, whose company recently commissioned a lithium pilot plant in western Namibia, said the country’s ambitions to become a manufacturing hub for battery metals will require significant infrastructure investments to support processing facilities.

Viljoen, who also spoke at the EU-Namibia Business Forum, said those clamouring to add value to raw materials in Namibia do so without understanding the complexities involved.

“There needs to be a huge investment, concurrent with the development of these facilities, in infrastructure, specifically, water, power and logistics. Those big projects don’t happen overnight,” he said.

According to John Grobler, an investigative journalist and environmental activist, most mining operations, including those of the controversial Chinese lithium miner Xinfeng, which has stockpiled 1000 tonnes of raw lithium ore in the harbour town of Walvis Bay in violation of the raw export ban, take place in the desert where there is scarce water.

“Where will they get their water? The nearest place is Uis, which also does not have water of its own and barely survives with the trickle of water supplied by the Omdel Dam pipeline,” Grobler said.

Namibia is prone to droughts due to its arid climate with prolonged periods of low rainfall significantly impacting on water availability. According to Grobler, a number of projects in Namibia have in the past failed for a lack of water.

Give us a chance

The acting executive director in the ministry of mines and energy, Bryan Eiseb, told The Africa Report that Namibia’s domestic beneficiation policy should not be perceived as scaring away investors. Instead, he believes that genuine investors should take advantage of the country’s favourable investment climate.

“As the saying goes, Rome was not built in a day. We need to work with investors to create jobs, skills and capacity in Namibia while also fostering mutually beneficial coexistence,” Eiseb said.

Veston Malango, CEO of the Chamber of Mines, told The Africa Report that the mining sector’s representative group “wholeheartedly” supports local value addition to all minerals produced in Namibia in order to grow the economy and create jobs.

“It is necessary for [the] government to control and regulate the export of unprocessed critical minerals to support job creation and grow the economy in line with the African Mining Vision,” Malango said.

With an installed generation capacity of 509.5 MW, Namibia imports between 60% and 70% of its energy needs.

However, NamPower spokesperson Irene Hoases tells The Africa Report that the power utility has enough capacity to supply both existing and new customers from its current and committed generation projects.

“The utility is keenly awaiting and still has to receive connection applications for beneficiation of Namibian mineral resources.  In fact, NamPower is looking forward to increased demand to motivate or improve further investments in projects, such as the Kudu Gas-to-Power and Baines Hydroelectric power projects,” Hoases said.

According to a report by the World Bank Group, over a dozen nations, including DRC, Nigeria, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and Ghana, have banned raw, non-processed mineral exports in efforts to become valuable contributors to global value chains in the processing and manufacturing of essential minerals.